


and all that comes with it

by TheQueenInTheNorth



Category: Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, F/F, Pre-Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-21
Updated: 2020-05-21
Packaged: 2021-03-02 18:55:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 962
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24301726
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheQueenInTheNorth/pseuds/TheQueenInTheNorth
Summary: Aida has a human body, now - and the soul to go with it.
Relationships: AIDA/Melinda May
Comments: 10
Kudos: 20
Collections: AOS Season 7 Countdown





	and all that comes with it

Aida gasps for breath, dragging air into lungs that never needed air before. She breathed in the Framework but that was just because she wanted to. She’d thought she’d formed the habit but this - the need for air, the relief that comes with it flooding her lungs - it’s new. It’s exciting. It’s terrifying.

She takes deeper breaths, slowly, measured. She remembers the way Agent May breathed when the simulation told her she was doing her Tai Chi. A routine, every morning, and Aida had watched her monitors, making sure her body was well as her mind made its own reality.

There is nothing telling her if her own saturation values are good, if her brain is getting the oxygen it needs. Nothing but the way her shoulders relax with every calming breath.

She’ll stop being aware of the process eventually, she supposes. Her heartbeat will stop being overpoweringly loud, too. Every bit of her body will just be.

For now, though, all she can do is understand why newborns cry.

They get held.

They need it.

So does Aida.

Instead she wraps herself in the robe set out, the one she set out, much earlier, for a body not built yet. The floor is so cold against her feet. The fabric of the robe against her skin is much more foreign than she expected.

She lifts her arm, watching the fabric slide down, feeling it slide down.

There is something on the inside of her wrist and her breath hitches.

Just when she’d almost gotten the hang of ignoring it, letting it become automatic.

She’s too fascinated by the mark to truly mind, her lips curling into a smile.

She didn’t know she would feel smiling. Maybe that’s just because her smile is so, so wide.

She presses her wrist against her chest as she walks out towards the voices, like it’s precious, like it’s a secret.

Three pairs of eyes turn to her. Only one of them matters.

“Ophelia,”Leopold says. He reaches for her.

Ophelia didn’t know how to want, to truly want. Ophelia didn’t know what it felt like to be giddy with excitement. Ophelia played pretend.

Aida steps past Leopold. She barely glances at him. The name on his wrist has always been Jemma Simmons, even when he scoffed at soulmates, scoffed at destiny, swore Ophelia was all that mattered, blank wrist and all.

Aida does not have a blank wrist.

Aida has a soulmate.

“Melinda,”she says, the first word out of a mouth that is truly hers.

She reaches for her soulmate. Her soulmate reaches for a gun.

She takes them away from the weapon, away from everything, and marvels at how strange the sand feels under her toes.

“Let me see your wrist,”she says.

Melinda offers her arm almost automatically. She got used to obeying Madame Hydra.

Aida wrinkles her nose and does not push her sleeve back the way she’d intended.

“Please,”she tries again,“Can I see your wrist?”

If this confuses Melinda, she does not show it. The only thing on her face is a sort of curiosity.

"Go ahead,"she says.

Aida takes her hand to turn her arm over and pushes back her sleeve. Carefully, slowly, reverently she traces a finger across the letters there. Skin on skin. Melinda’s skin is soft. Her muscles stiffen, and then she yanks her arm away, staring at the four letters there.

No last name, of course. Just Aida.

Not A.I.D.A. but Aida.

She can make the name her own, the way she’s made everything else Radcliffe so thoughtlessly gave her her own.

"How?"Melinda manages, tearing her gaze from the letters on her used to be blank wrist back to the woman whose name her skin bears now.

"I suppose I have a soul now,"Aida says. Something bubbles up from her belly and through her chest until it leaves her mouth as a slightly breathless giggle. Happiness feels warm all over, warmer than the sun."I’m human. It worked."

She shows Melinda her own wrist, her smile so wide it almost hurts.

Melinda scrutinises her for a few seconds that feel like forever.

"So you’re human,"she finally says."Did it grant you humanity?"

Aida doesn’t need to ask what she means. Melinda’s friends are still were Aida left them. In danger. Perhaps dead already.

It twists something in her gut, something that wasn’t there when it was all just her well-meant alterations bringing about death and destruction in the framework.

She disappears without a word, leaving Melinda alone on the beach.

She’s sitting with her shoes off, her toes buried in the sand, and watching the sunset when Aida returns.

"They’re safe,"Aida says.

"I know,"Melinda says. Her eyes don’t leave the sky. She pats the ground next to her."I trusted you to do the right thing."

Aida sits down next to her, their shoulders almost touching. She runs her fingers of the mark on her wrist."Because of this?"

"No." She turns to Aida just long enough to give her a small smile."Because you get to make your own decisions now, and feel the consequences that come with them."

They sit in companionable silence for a while, then Aida asks,"What’s the consequence of not taking us back to the others for now?"

She wants her soulmate to herself for a little while. More than that, she wants some semblance of space until she doesn’t feel so overwrought with each new emotion.

"Food poisoning, unless you can cook,"Melinda deadpans.

Aida chuckles and leans against Melinda’s shoulder. She doesn’t move away.

"We’ll figure something out,"Aida says and brushes her fingers against her soulmate‘s.

Melinda hooks their pinkies together."We will."

They do.


End file.
